Henry was unsurprised at the interruption, which immediately made Regan suspicious.
“Regan, Lucas is one of my top students. A CCJ and biology dual major.”
“Forensics,” Regan said. She’d been a CCJ and psychology dual major because she had considered criminal profiling and had even thought about becoming a psychiatrist. Time and money—and the fact that the thought of years of medical school made her hyperventilate—had her ending her academic career with two degrees in four years and no regrets.
“I’m hoping to get in with Phoenix PD,” Lucas said, his scratchy voice showing his nerves. He cleared his throat. “They have an awesome lab, but mostly, that’s where my family is. My older brother is going through the police academy now. My mom’s a nurse, my sisters are still in high school. I really enjoyed your presentation today.”
“Thank you.”
“Lucas has developed one of the most interesting capstone projects I’ve seen in my two decades teaching here,” Henry said. “He’s hosting a podcast about an unsolved campus murder that happened a few years ago. Lucas, please, sit down. Join us.”
Lucas sat in the other guest chair, the one still facing the desk. He had surprisingly good posture—maybe because of his short stature. Too often Regan saw kids who had perpetually slumped, misaligned shoulders because they carried heavy backpacks on one side for years.
“Tell Regan about your podcast. The Sorority Murder. Isn’t that a provocative title?”
“It is,” Regan concurred. “Is this about that nursing student who was killed three years back? My dad talked about it once or twice.”
Lucas nodded. “Candace Swain—a nursing student with Sigma Rho sorority—was found dead in the lake at the Hope Centennial Golf Course. While the police had a suspect, a transient who was seen on campus several times in the weeks leading up to her disappearance, they never found him. According to a witness, he was seen jumping on a freight car shortly after her body was found.”
Regan remembered a few details about the case. “What’s the purpose of your podcast?” she asked.
“Well, there’s a lot of oddities about the case that I want to explore, but mostly I want to retrace her steps, from her disappearance until her death.”
Lucas leaned forward, clearly excited about his project. “Candace went missing shortly after midnight on a Friday right after the Sigma Rho Spring Fling ended. Her body was found Sunday morning—over a week later,” he emphasized. “No one has come forward to say they had seen her, talked to her, anything.
“The police know that Candace was friendly with a transient, Joseph Abernathy, through her volunteer work. Several witnesses said Candace confronted him the night she disappeared. My theory is that the police had it in their heads that Abernathy was guilty, and they didn’t fully look at other options. There was some circumstantial evidence against Abernathy, and his disappearance is suspicious. But I’ve done a lot of research over the last few months, and I’m positive something else happened.”
“What do you think happened?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Just not what the police think.” He took a deep breath. “I’m really getting ahead of myself. Here are the facts. Candace disappeared after the party. She was seen arguing with another sorority sister and walked off, upset. She wasn’t reported missing until Monday night. Her roommate had gone home that weekend and assumed when she returned late Sunday that Candace was with her boyfriend, so she didn’t worry about her until later. The campus police found Candace’s vehicle in the parking structure on Tuesday morning. They called her family, her friends, and then notified Flagstaff PD on Wednesday morning. At that point it would seem she’d been missing for five days.
“Flagstaff PD retraced campus-police steps—talking to her friends, her family. Candace was romantically involved with two men, a student and a bartender. They were both interviewed. Police also went to Sunrise Center, where Candace regularly volunteered, to talk to Abernathy, but he hadn’t been seen by staff for more than a week. This apparently wasn’t unusual because he only slept at the shelter when it was cold, though they were surprised he hadn’t come in for a meal. There had been previous complaints about Abernathy from business owners, so the police knew who he was and issued a BOLO.
“No progress was made until Candace’s body was found Sunday morning by the maintenance crew at Hope Centennial Golf Course.”
“And because it’s a golf course, people were there on Saturday but no one saw a body,” Regan guessed. “Could her body have been weighed down? Perhaps rising to the surface after a week?”
“That was, I believe, the assumption, except that the autopsy report revealed that Candace was killed between ten o’clock Saturday night and one o’clock Sunday morning,” Lucas said. “No signs of long-term restraint, sexual assault, or malnourishment were present—nothing to indicate that she had been held captive. A rock was used to weigh her down, but it wasn’t tied on well, and she surfaced. The autopsy was clear. Candace was strangled, but that wasn’t what killed her. She drowned.”
“Perhaps,” Regan offered, “she was strangled to unconsciousness, and the killer thought she was dead and pushed her into the lake.”
“That’s a theory. Except she didn’t drown in that lake.”
“Now you have me intrigued.” She took another sip of her Scotch. “How do you know this?”
“I interned at the morgue last summer as part of my degree program. I read the reports. The water from her lungs was highly chlorinated. I talked to the maintenance crew at Hope Centennial. They don’t chlorinate their water because they stock fish to keep the eco-balance. But just to check, I took samples of the water, and it’s nowhere close to being a match.”